The Break of Noon

It was a radiant and in-pretty-great-shape David Duchovny the one we met last Tuesday in NY, at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, right after a performance of “The Break of Noon”, running till December 22nd (for infos check www.mcctheater.org).

Duchovny plays John Smith, the main character of Neil LaBute’s last work. He is the only survivor of a shooting who is forced to deal with this tragic event and is trying to turn around his life and that of others. John Smith is actually convinced that it was God who saved him from that massacre and that He entrusted him with a message to share with mankind. “Be good”, this is the message that Smith feels he has to spread after his experience, a revolutionary massage in its simplicity.
As the story unfolds, though, we find out that, before the shooting, John Smith was a man with a few shadows in his life, a now ex-wife he cheated on with her cousin (both characters played by Amanda Peet) and an overtly mocking attitude towards his coworkers. And it is exactly one of them who, one day, having being mistreated and fired, goes back to the office on a lunch break to seek revenge and carry out the massacre. Nobody believes Smith’s story, his redemption, his will to turn around his life, to sort things out with the people he hurt in the past. Almost all of the characters he meets along the way want to believe his story, but they never truly do. His experience gets trivialized and ridiculed during a talk show (where the host is played by an amazing Tracee Chimo), but despite all that, John is even more certain of what he went through and what he has to do.

This conflict between those wanting to believe his story and those who don’t want to or can’t believe brings back memories from a few episodes of The X-files dealing with this very issue, which was so dear to Chris Carter. The same thing can be said for the open ending of the show, where Smith seems to turn into a preacher with the goal of spreading the message that God has given him. But is that real or all we have seen is just some sort of purgatory, a road to redemption that John has to walk through before truly finding God and coming to Him, after his death? As we said, the ending is left open to various interpretations.

Duchovny remains on stage throughout the one hour and a half show, delivering two long monologues that in turn open and close “The break of Noon”. There is a good chemistry between him and Peet (whom he had already worked with on “I want to believe”), as with the other actors, the already mentioned Tracee Chimo, playing both the talk show host and the prostitute, and John Earl Jelks, playing both the lawyer and the detective. It is surprising to see Duchovny as a stage actor, without the small or big screen filter, and he truly lives up to the task. The alternation between lighter and ironic moments, which Duchovny is a master at, and the more dramatic ones allows us to experience all the gifts of an actor that, up to not so long ago, we had almost only known through the character of Mulder.

In the gallery, you can see some pictures showing our encounter with David at the end of the show. You can also check the official pictures for “The Break of Noon” at this link.

Translated by Giusy